A yell woke Sans up.

Sans tried very hard not to be woken up, as a rule. Sleep was a refuge. A fortress of non-being. In his vast experience with the various possible states of existence, Sans had discovered that the best way to avoid worrying about doing something was to not be there in the first place. This was one of the key secrets to the workings of the universe, and so he followed its wisdom by sleeping soundly whenever he could. Sleep was a break from worry and effort, and Sans considered it bad policy to take breaks from breaks.

But Papyrus was a factor. A being for whom the world was an exciting, challenging, and occasionally hazardous place. An outlook like Papyrus' resulted in a lot of loud noises, and sometimes it was important that Sans pay attention to them. So he dutifully pried one eye open and listened. The real sign that he needed to be concerned, or at least investigate, was when Papyrus continued yelling at something. One exclamation was a given.

The possibility of something being wrong was the only thing keeping him vaguely conscious. He was just aware enough to notice with a distant sense of disappointment that there weren't any sheets involved in the vicinity, which meant he would have to make his bed soon. Fortunately, Sans' method involved only picking up things that ought to be on the mattress and piling them on with no regard for order or position.

Nothing sprung out of the silence to interrupt Sans' halfhearted lamenting of chores. Keeping an eye open proved to be hard work, and as the seconds ticked by, he let it droop closed. He was a fully functioning monster with all five senses and more besides. He could listen just fine with his eyes closed.

Almost immediately, of course, he fell back asleep.

"Good morning, brother!"

That was how Papyrus always started his morning. At least, it was how he always started Sans' morning, which was an entirely separate creature. Sans' day was an elusive entity that began and ended at the skeleton's whim with no discernible pattern. Papyrus (years ago) had asked whether this was some strange result of theoretical time meddlings, to which Sans had replied groggily, "Nah, bro, I just slept in today."

As a result, Papyrus had taken it upon himself to be prepared at all times for the beginning of Sans' day, whenever it might decide to slink into existence. It was a responsibility that required constant vigilance. He had to be ready to spring into action at any moment. So far, he had delivered his greeting with laudable punctuality, and this morning (early afternoon) was no exception.

Sans waved his acknowledgement as he shuffled to the couch, where he collapsed with such enthusiasm that his coat rode up and half buried his face.

Papyrus tapped his foot impatiently. "Sans! Don't fall asleep on the couch! You just got up!"

"And now I'm rewarding myself with a nap," was Sans' muffled reply.

"I had," Papyrus declared, "the weirdest dream ever last night!"

Sans peered at him over the coat collar, pupils glimmering with the promise of an immature joke in the near future. "Didn't think you were a fan of sleep, Pap. Congrats."

"I tried my hand at it," Papyrus said haughtily. "And! I found it very dissatisfying! There were many other things I could have been doing! Besides having a weird conversation with a mysterious figure!" Sans' brow knitted in a way that scrunched up his eye sockets, and Papyrus enjoyed a small rush of victory. "Aha! Intriguing, isn't it?"

His brother slid back in an unforgivable travesty of seated position, feet stretching out in front of him. "You got me. I gotta know the whole story now."

Papyrus struck a pose. "Very well! This is the tale of... the dream I had last night!"

Papyrus was dreaming.

Dreaming, he noted immediately, was suspiciously like being awake in his own bed. The only difference was that a strange, flickering figure was doing its best to stand in the corner of his room, which wasn't something that regularly occurred in his waking hours. Since he had reluctantly decided to get several hours of sleep tonight, he concluded that he was still in the middle of it.

After a moment, the figure seemed to get a handle on where the floor was and how to exist in a more constant fashion. Papyrus let it slide, since obviously his unconscious mind was not practiced at dreaming, where it had to make up where things went on the spot.

"What is going on?" he demanded. Just to be sure, he added, "Am I dreaming?"

"Oh...?" The dream skeleton tilted its head and made slow gestures. "Are you?"

Well, that just went to show you how much help enigmatic dream figures were. Papyrus had to do everything around here. "I must be!" he decided. All at once he realized where this encounter must be going. Undyne especially had given him numerous lessons on heroic legends like that of Inuyasha. Whenever heroes had dreams, a wise being appeared and revealed their destiny to them. Papyrus wiggled his feet and prepared himself for a full description of his glorious future career. "W-well... do you have a message for the great Papyrus?"

The figure seemed to settle in on itself. "I have been gone for a long time." There was something peculiar about the voice, but Papyrus knew without a doubt what it was saying. Dreams, he decided, were ridiculous. The figure's smile stretched gloomily like taffy. "Or. No time at all."

Papyrus stopped. Sans had changed. His pupils dimmed until his eyes held nothing but the black of an ancient void, merciless and cold.

"Sans!" Papyrus huffed. "Don't do the eye thing while I'm talking!"

"Huh?" His brother blinked and came back to himself. "Sorry, bro. That's, uh... that's a weird thing to say, though."

"That's what I thought! And it only gets stranger from there! Dreams are very overrated, brother!"

Papyrus had nothing to say to that, but his dream seemed to find it amusing. "Ha. Ha." The figure shimmered uncertainly and grew somber. When it next spoke, it was with the universe-altering gravity Papyrus had been waiting for. "Papyrus..."

He clutched his bedcovers and sat up even straighter. "Yes?"

"How have you been?"

"I have been fantastic!" Papyrus informed the figure. "Thank you for asking!" The figure listened in contented silence. When no revelations were brought forth, he prompted matter-of-factly, "I am going to be in the royal guard soon!"

The figure sighed—or at least, there was a sigh echoing softly around the room, and it coincided with the moment when the dream skeleton half closed its eyes and smiled. "That. Is good to know."

"Which brings me to a question!" Papyrus hesitated, which was fundamentally un-Papyrus-like, but if his dream was not going to grant him a lifelong quest, then perhaps it could at least give him an answer or two. "Do I... know you?"

"Do you?"

"Did you?"

"I have never seen that being before!" Papyrus replied with as much conviction as he could muster, which was not nearly as much as usual. His life flowed over with conviction. He even liked to keep a reserve of conviction, just in case he ran out of his normal stock, but even that couldn't make him sound one hundred percent certain in his answer.

Sans put his hands in his pockets. His eye sockets drooped halfway closed in a way eerily similar to the dream figure.

"I haven't!"

"You're kinda answering a different question there, Papyrus," Sans said, a strained undercurrent in his voice.

The truth was that Papyrus' conviction was telling him that he had known the mysterious dream figure. But that of course was not possible since he had no memory of the skeleton before last night, and you simply couldn't know someone before you met them. That was going about things in the entirely wrong order. His attempt to explain this resulted in sputtering, so instead he concluded, "Sans, please, I am trying to tell a story!"

Thinking too much about whether he knew a skeleton that only ever managed to halfway exist even in a dream made Papyrus' head hurt, so he opted to invent his own answers. "If this is my dream... then I can know if you if I want!"

The figure clasped its hands with syrupy slowness. "I would like that. If you would."

He did. There was something profoundly cozy about being half tucked in bed talking to this dream with the strange voice. "Well, then! That is that!" Papyrus squinted hopefully. "Is there anything else you would like to tell me?"

The dream skeleton nodded once, twice, three times. "There is... something I must ask of you."

Papyrus was only too ready to accept his vision-given duty.

"Would you please. Tell Sans to clean his room."

His eyes widened. This was not only the kind of destiny he could support—it was the kind he had already mastered. He was so good at this! "I do! Every day!"

"Splendid."

The figure's pleased reaction gave Papyrus an extra surge of pride, and he grinned. The warmth faltered when the figure faded nearly out of view. Papyrus screwed his eye sockets shut and focused on berating his unconscious mind. He had been dreaming for several minutes; his mind really ought to have this down by now. When he opened his eyes, the skeleton was back.

"How very difficult this is," the figure gasped. Its brow tilted mournfully. "How brief my appearance must seem to you."

"Don't worry!" Papyrus assured the figure. "I am mastering dreaming even as we speak! I can keep dreaming all night!"

The dream skeleton seemed not to hear him. It began to fade again. "I miss you both, Papyrus," it intoned.

"Wha..." Papyrus felt odd all around. It was strange and unnerving to hear such a sentiment from a dream he had just met, but then again it wasn't. The figure offered a kindly smile, one that Papyrus loved with all his heart for no reason that he could remember. "Wait—!"

The last visible glimmer of the smile widened. The figure's final words drifted across the room. "But as you can see. My aim is getting better."

The jumble of emotions roiling within Papyrus was immediately bowled over by the tremendous bad quality of that joke. His own face turned traitor by smiling at it. Papyrus pulled the covers over his head and yelled, with feeling, "AUGH!"

"And that was my dream!" Papyrus concluded. Silence greeted him; his brother was bowed forward, breath hitching suspiciously. "Sans? Are you... crying?"

"No," Sans replied quickly without looking up. His shoulders shook. "I'm laughing. That was a really good joke."

"It was a terrible joke!" Papyrus protested. "Of course you would like it! I can't believe my own dreams would turn against me!"

Sans sniffed and finally straightened, grinning broadly. "Sounds like a pretty good dream to me."

"Well..." Papyrus briefly considered the issue and then put his hands on his hips. "I suppose I could always practice more!"

For a moment, Sans wore the image of the dream figure's smile. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. "That's the spirit, bro."

"Sans?"

"Yeah?"

Papyrus puffed out his chest proudly and adopted his best ultimate-destiny voice. "Go clean your room!"